As multicloud becomes standard, companies demand consistent data services, making unified cloud storage the foundation for artificial intelligence and day-to-day operations.

In these multicloud environments, the hardest problem isn’t capacity — it’s consistency. Businesses need storage that behaves the same whether the workload runs on Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp., or Google Cloud infrastructure. NetApp Inc. centers its approach on hyperscaler neutrality and direct data access for AI without moving large datasets, according to Pravjit Tiwana (pictured, right), senior vice president and general manager of cloud storage and the Services Business Unit at NetApp Inc.

NetApp’s Ashish Dhawan and Pravjit Tiwana talk with theCUBE about recent product announcements and the company’s push for unified cloud storage.

“We are one of the uniquely differentiated storage sources out there where we are natively integrated into each of the three hyperscalers, AI and analytics stacks,” Tiwana said. “Be it Bedrock and Q in Amazon, or Azure AI and analytics sources, or Gemini Enterprise and Google.”

Tiwana and Ashish Dhawan (left), senior vice president and chief revenue officer of the Cloud Business Unit at NetApp, spoke with theCUBE’s Christophe Bertrand at the NetApp Insight 2025 event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the company’s recent product announcement and the move to unified cloud storage. (* Disclosure below.) 

Unified cloud storage takes a leap forward

NetApp frames its role — and its recent product announcements — as making the major cloud providers feel uniform for storage teams. Features such as SnapMirror and FlexCache carry over from their ONTAP platform to managed services, which means migration and caching policies travel with the data. In a notable shift, Google Cloud NetApp Volumes adds block alongside file protocols, reducing sprawl while keeping a single operations model for VMware and SAP. That lets customers treat it as a default service without worrying about protocol fit, according to Dhawan.

“Google Cloud NetApp Volumes is one of the most performant storage services within the Google platform,” he said. “Now, with this announcement that GCNV will support the block protocol, it gives the customers the freedom to look at GCNV as the storage service of choice without worrying whether the protocol used is file storage or block storage.”

The company also highlighted governance, performance and developer access when it comes to enabling unified cloud storage. Their new Visual Studio Code extension brings chat-style storage operations to engineers, and Data Migrator offers a free, secure path to move data from any system into NetApp cloud storage. Underpinning these announcements is the acknowledgement that enterprises now favor hyperscalers’ frontier models while keeping their own data in place for inference, Dhawan explained.

“Customers are very clear: They don’t want to create their own models anymore,” he said. “The frontier models that are there, which are hosted on each of the hyperscalers, are getting to a parameter level that they are so good that they don’t need to create their own models.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the NetApp Insight 2025 event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the NetApp Insight event. Neither NetApp, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE